Some bonds are hard to break, others are locked in a pattern of eternal return. In the autumn of 2013, I regained official custody of Abhilasha from Hénoc Marceau, who was having trouble selling her following his decision to move back to France. At around the same time I was by chance due to return to India for a month-long publicity tour; it seemed to me that the stars were aligning and that this was a sign from the cosmos that Abhilasha and I were due an encore.
We were reunited at 6 am in a parking lot in Andheri West, a suburb of Mumbai just a few miles from the airport. Thor and I had just landed there a couple of hours earlier, and were still drowsy from the flight. Hénoc’s friend who had been looking after Abhilasha had broken his leg in a car accident a few days earlier. He’d had Abhilasha’s keys in his pocket at the time and now they were bent out of shape.
But they still worked. As the Nano rattled into life, I was assailed by a sense of amazement at the 10,000 kilometres I’d attempted in this little car that, after the bulked-out 1993 Audi Cabriolet I’d been driving in Rome for the past two years, felt more like a mobile jerrycan. Abhilasha’s Frisbee-sized wheel was very heavy to steer, her gearstick seemed stiff and her brakes were incredibly sensitive.
We spent several nostalgic days together driving around Mumbai and, as soon as I got used to the traffic again, we were back on our old form, weaving in and out of jams, honking for all we were worth and rather ignominiously running out of petrol in the full flow of evening rush hour by the Flora Fountain.
My departure loomed and still I couldn’t bring myself to think about selling Abhilasha again. I toyed with other options: the most appealing was to palm her off on one of my friends or acquaintances in the city who’d take temporary custody of her, but (understandably?) none was biting. A man I met at the British Council offered to raffle her off at his office Christmas party, but that plan also eventually fell through. Up to the evening before my departure I was in a sustained state of denial about where I could leave Abhilasha (the airport car park seemed as good a last resort as any), when the day was saved by a photographer friend of a friend who happened to have a spare parking space at his apartment in Bandra, Mumbai’s hipster neighborhood of the north.
I dropped the Nano off at her new home just hours before my flight and was pleased to see that this particular part of Mumbai, right next to the sea and with the quiet air of a fishing village, was possibly one of the nicest parts of the city I had seen to date. Sea air corrosion notwithstanding, Abhilasha was in a beautiful spot and in good hands.
She now spends her days bombing around Mumbai on photography assignments. I draw comfort from the knowledge that she’s being put to good use, that she’s there for me should the need ever arise, and that our partnership is sealed until the day I’m made an offer I can’t refuse.